Happy Hour Harmonica Podcast

Rod Piazza interview

• Neil Warren • Season 1 • Episode 7

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Rod Piazza developed his exciting brand of West coast jump harmonica in Southern California, where he formed his own band before joining forces with George Harmonica Smith, to form Bacon Fat. Two harps, what a sound!
Rod has an extensive discography, both as a solo artist, and also with his long term band, the Mighty Flyers, alongside his wife Honey.
Rod talks us through his evergreen career and how he has burned it up on stage for so many years.

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https://www.themightyflyers.com/

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SPEAKER_00:

Hi, Neil Warren here again and welcome to another episode of the Happy Hour Harmonica podcast with more interviews with some of the finest harmonica players around today. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast and also check out the Spotify playlist where some of the tracks discussed during the interviews can be heard. Rod Piazza develops his exciting brand of West Coast Jump Harmonica in Southern California, where he formed his own band before joining forces with George Harmonica Smith to form Bacon Fat, Two Hearts, What A Sound. rod has an extensive discography both as a solo artist and also with his long-term band the mighty flyers alongside his wife honey rod talks us through his evergreen career and how he has burned it up on stage for so many years Hello Rob Piat, thank you very much for joining me today. Oh man, my pleasure Neil, thank you. You grew up in Southern California. What was the music scene like when you were growing up and your sort of influences when you were younger? The

SPEAKER_02:

first influences were the blues and R&B records that my older brothers brought home. And then from there, the LPs, the blues LPs that I kind of got turned on to from hearing a few songs on the radio or records of my brothers and pursuing it farther and farther into the blues idiom. That was my first education, I would say. And then the second education would have been after we had already been playing and had a couple records out. My introduction to the black community of Los Angeles Watts area And all the great blues men who had moved to Southern California and lived and played down in Los Angeles through George Smith, he introduced me to that whole scene. And T-Bone Walker, Pee Wee Creighton, Big Mama Thornton, Eddie Vinson, Joe Turner, Roy Brown, on and on and on. And that's just in the SoCal area. You had Lowell Folsom, too. All these artists, you know. And then up in the Bay Area, there were more who had my I think you started playing guitar first, yeah? You had a guitar bought

SPEAKER_00:

for you when you were 10 years old, is that right?

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, I bought a guitar off a lady selling them on the street, and I think it was four or five dollars, and I cried enough to get my mom and my brother to walk back down the street where she was and buy me a guitar, and I started on that. I didn't play no harp until my brother took me to see Jimmy Reed and introduced me on break to him and said, this young man is trying to play guitar. I said, well, he needs a harmonica to go with it, and he handed me one of his old harmonicas, so So I started fooling around with that, and then eventually bought some harmonicas. And when I got in the first group, they had guys playing guitar better than me, and they taught me to blow harp and sing. So that was the end of guitar.

SPEAKER_00:

So your first harmonica was a harmonica given to you by Jimmy Reed?

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

That's a pretty awesome first harmonica. These early recordings that you listened to, do you remember if there was any particular inspiration for harmonica at

SPEAKER_02:

the Jimmy Reed album, Best of Jimmy Reed. Best of Jimmy Reed Slim Harpo, Scratch My Back, God Love If You Want It, anything that you would hear that was an AM hit out here, those things kind of piqued my interest. From there, I've got the Sonny Boy William record, and then this cat had a little music store, and he told me, he said, man, do you know Little Walter? I said, no. And he said, here's the best of Little Walter. When he gave me that record, then I pretty much forgot about it. You formed

SPEAKER_00:

your first band at high school, yeah? I think they were called the Mystics, and you were singing and playing harp with those.

UNKNOWN:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, that band was the Mystics, and then it became the same band, became the house of DBS, Dirty Blues Sound, and then we got a record deal and got a manager in Hollywood, and he changed the name to the Dirty Blues Band, and we recorded for ABC Blues Waves. We were the only white act they had. They had Otis Spann and T-Bone Walker and several people, George Smith. And they signed us. I guess they thought we would sell some blues to young white hippies or whatever, you know, because we all had long hair and we were trying to play. We were just learning, you know.

SPEAKER_00:

I think I got both those albums. Stone Dirt was one, wasn't it? And then the Dirty Blues Band. Some great raw tracks in there, some great playing by yourself in there. I think you developed a good sound by that stage.

UNKNOWN:

And I thought, not too fast.

SPEAKER_02:

I think I was about 18 when I did the first record and about 19, if that, when I did the second one. We were just lucky to have a record deal and happy to have somebody recording us and putting us on some shows.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, great. So from a very young age then, you were doing music as a full-time job. Yeah,

SPEAKER_02:

trying to be. That isn't to say that I didn't have to work a day job on different things to supplement the income, you know. But we were certainly trying at that age to get ahead and make it in music. I knew that's all I want to do. And then you met George Shalmonica Smith. By that time, a lot of the guys had went into the Army, and I had just formed the Rod Piazza Blues Band. Then, when I teamed up with George... We went by the Ash Grove. Big Mama Thornton was going to start playing, and they were rehearsing that night. It was closed, but George Smith was standing outside, and I talked to him and asked him if I could come by the house sometime and learn something on the harmonica, and he said, yeah, sure. He didn't have much to say, and that was the first meeting. I don't know if it was six months or a year or two months. I don't recall how long. I went to the who was called Big Walter was supposed to be playing there. So I drove down to the Ash Grove to see who we thought was Big Walter. It turned out to be Big Walter Smith, George Smith. He called me up on the bandstand to play, and I was so intimidated. I did the best I could, and he looked at me and said, okay, you can get around on the little harp a little bit. Then he made me take the chromatic and try to do something on that. I hadn't been playing the chromatic but a little bit, and he realized I could be get around on it, so he let me sit back down, and that was it. I thanked him after the night, and he didn't even look up. He just said, okay. A few months after that, I was opening the show for Holland Wolfe there for a week, and George was playing with Wolfe. I hired George sometimes to blow harp with him on tour. George came up on my set, and now I handed him the harp, and he sat in with me, and we did that all week long, and we tore it up together, and George said at the with Wolf for a month. I want you to start a band with me with two harps. I said, two harps? He said, yeah, that's what we're going to do. And I said, okay. And he says, I'll call you. I figured he'd never call me. And he got back off the road a couple of months. I got a phone call. Rod? Yeah. George Smith. Oh, hey, George. How you doing? Yeah, you ready

SPEAKER_00:

to work? Yeah. For people listening, Bacon Fat, a great band. It's a treat for harmonica fans to have two harmonicas I think you came out with, was it two or three albums with Bacon Fat? We did

SPEAKER_02:

one. Then we went on a tour to England in 1970 for Mike Vernon, you know, Blue Horizon. He had saw us opening for Paul Butterfield over at the Golden Bear down in Huntington. And he signed my band. He said, I want to do a record on you. He had just lost sleep with Mac. They went to Warner Brothers. So I said, well, can you do one on George Smith, too? And he says, yeah. So we did No Time for Jive with George. He brought us over in 70 to tour, and we recorded a few more songs over there while in England, and he put that out on a Tough Dude record.

SPEAKER_00:

George Smith obviously had a big influence on you, and you played with him for a good few years. Did he particularly tell you much about how to play the harp, or was it just a case of playing with him and picking up from listening to him, playing along with him? We both

SPEAKER_02:

had the same harmonicas. We played the same harmonicas out of the bag and the same amp, same microphone. I would play half the set and then I'd sit down and I'd watch him play and he'd look at me and give me looks. And I would try my best to figure out why the hell does it sound different and why is it so much better when he's playing than when I'm playing. And when I would get back up, he would walk by the bandstand and look at me if I was doing something and and kind of like give me a, oh yeah, or a hmm. And then he would grab my hands and squeeze them around the microphone so I could get a better tone, you know. And he'd force me to pick up the chromatic harp more than I would have. So I ended up playing it, you know, every two or three songs. So I was able to advance on that instrument as well as a small harp pretty quick.

SPEAKER_00:

One of the songs, the tribute to George Smith song that you do, yeah, you talk about George on there and So yeah, it's a great song. I also hear George was quite a performer on stage as well. He did some crazy things on stage. Is that something you tried to emulate as well? Well,

SPEAKER_02:

it started, we were playing the, George used to go out in the crowd all the time, he had a long cord, you know, and he would go out on the crowd on the last song of the set, and this one night we were playing, and George told me, he said, okay, Rod, tonight, now we're both going out in the crowd, I got another 20-foot cord, and I said, no, George, that's your thing, man, you know, he goes, no, you're going out, we're going to go out on each side of the stage, and we'll meet in the middle out there, and we'll upset the club, and, you know, That's what I did that night, and then after that I started doing it on my own, and eventually I got a wireless and hooked it up to the harmonica mic somehow and started using the wireless for the harmonica. I was the first guy that did that. Then Albert King, he came along and asked me, what wireless, how are you doing that and this and that, and I showed him all that stuff. He said that Keith Richard told him how, but really it was this little harmonica player, Rod Piazza, that showed it to him.

SPEAKER_00:

Brilliant, yeah. Yeah, then that's quite a common trick now, the harmonica player, isn't it? You know, to walk out in the crowd with a harmonica, like you say, but quite often with a wireless microphone. So you think maybe you were the start of that, you and George at

SPEAKER_02:

least. I'd say George Smith was the start of it, and I know that George's mom told me that when George was in Chicago, him and Walter would do some stuff like that, you know, and certainly there was guitar players who did it. So I can only tell you from the era that I came up in, I was the only harp player using a wireless to go out there. I had never seen nobody else do it.

SPEAKER_00:

So you mentioned Little Walter, who's a... you know, obviously an influence to every blues harmonica player. Anything particular about Little Walter or, you know, the songs that inspire you from Little Walter? Yeah, I love the fact that

SPEAKER_02:

Walter had the swing jazz saxophone influence on his playing, the way he phrased and the way he constructed his lines. And the fact that he had songs... that weren't just your average three-chord blues song. I mean, take a song like Too Late. or Who Told You or One Chance With You. I mean, Walter had all these great songs, man, that were really great blues songs and way, way different from the standard three-chord blues. Not that they had a lot of different changes in them, but they were just... constructed in a way that, man, there were so many great songs there. And then you had that swinging double shuffle, we called it, that B-Lo would play, you know, which was sort of a march, but it was more of a swinging beat, which enabled the harmonica to be more free without the backbeat on two and four, and allowed you to construct the type of phrasing and lines that were so open and available if you had the confidence content in your head and your heart and your soul to put into your harmonica.

SPEAKER_00:

So it's interesting you're talking about trying to emulate the sound of saxophones, and that's something that is talked about with Little Walter quite a lot, that, you know, they try to emulate the sounds of saxophones. That's more in your phrasing, is it, rather than the actual tone of the harmonica that you're doing that? And were you, you know, did you listen to a lot of saxophone players yourself to try and emulate the sort of lines that saxophone players play?

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, quite a bit. Lewis Jordan, Gene Ammons, Red Prysock. so many of them. I love Ben Webster, and I love all their playing. I know when I first got with George Smith, I was still playing some Sonny Boy stuff, and George would walk by the bandstand and tell me, Rod, blow your axe, play your axe, man, play your axe. He didn't want me to do the sort of wah-wah harmonica effect. He wanted me to play it like an instrument, like a saxophone, and play it like a horn. Obviously, that's where Walter was headed. I know Dave Myers used to come see me play all the time when I'd go to Chicago, and he told me, he said, Rod, you know, Gene Ammons would come down to the club where we was playing, me and Walter, and he would sit in with us, and he goes, Walter's records were okay, Rod, but you should have heard when him and Gene Ammons was jamming on a live set. Oh, man, I would have given anything to hear that. To me, the acoustic harmonica didn't really turn me on a great deal. That amp amplified horn sound with the microphone in the box. You know, that really was what moved me.

SPEAKER_00:

Talking through more some of your albums, you've got a great long list of released albums. It's great to see. So your first album came out in 1967 with the Dirty Blues Band. Then you started, obviously you did Bacon Flats, which we talked about. Then you started releasing some albums under your own name. I think Blues Man was the first album you released under your own name in 1973. and then you formed some of the Mighty Flyers, which has been your band since 1980. But you kept some solo albums as well during the time with the Mighty Flyers, didn't you? What's been the difference, emphasis, between when you're playing with the Mighty Flyers and when you did your solo albums? The

SPEAKER_02:

Mighty Flyers had a manager. The band as a whole was more interested in trying to make a hit record and get a worthwhile record deal and be able to advance in the business world.

SPEAKER_01:

The

SPEAKER_02:

solo records I did, I was only concerned in playing what I loved and what I had started out to do and what I always wanted to be, which was just a blues man. That's not to say that it didn't change in 1991, I believe, when I signed with Blacktop. Then it was more back to just pursuing the blues.

SPEAKER_00:

But I think that gives us a nice difference with your albums, isn't it? We've got the more sort of heavily blues-centric albums. And when you're playing with the Mighty Flies, you know, it's more boogie, you know, it's more kind of faster up-tempo jive jumping sort of music, which works great with your harp as well. I think your last album, Emerging Situation, is 2014. Other

SPEAKER_02:

than the live album at Fleetwoods that was put out by Big Mo, recorded in... Ninety-four. That just came out last year or a year before. But certainly the last studio record was Emergency Situation.

SPEAKER_00:

Are you planning on releasing any more albums?

SPEAKER_02:

I did a live recording down at Tampa Bay Blues Festival in Florida for Chuck Ross down there. He did a live recording, me and Kim Wilson, tribute to Lil' Walter. He hasn't been able to clear it to get it put out yet. So I'm thinking about having him sell it to Ripcat Records, who put out my instrumental album last year or year before, and combining it with about three new tracks in the studio and releasing that here in the near future.

SPEAKER_00:

You mentioned the instrumentals album there, which is called His Instrumentals, which is a great collection. So I really enjoyed that one. It's something I think you're particularly strong on. What's your approach to playing instrumentals on the harmonica?

SPEAKER_02:

Well, after a long career like I've had, it's been hard to create a new instrumental that didn't sound like one of the ones that I had already done. That was a big challenge, but I think I succeeded in it. I don't know of any other harmonica player that has as many original instrumentals as I've done over the years. And so I felt good about putting them all on one record and making a statement with that. I love doing instrumentals. I like finding the head and then creating something around it. Most of those that you have on that record, they're all done in one take because I'm primarily taking a structure and working around it, just whatever off the top of my head. I hate doing more than one take of the songs. All my songs are usually one take, two takes at the most. I mean, I don't know of any other harp players that have an instrumental like Stratospheric tune on the 64 chromatic.

SPEAKER_00:

these are songs that instrumentals written by yourself yeah so they're all original instrumentals yeah i think you're absolutely right listening to it they all sound very different when you're putting together an instrumental is there any particular secret you got to that are you just trying to make the head sound different are you and build from there

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, once you've got the head in your mind to give the identity to the tune, then in your soloing, you have one part of your mind, I think, is resting on what you've already done and the other part of your mind where you can go new territory. And then you've also got the soulful element of it to try to keep it soulful, you know, not make it too technical, but technical enough to where somebody says, oh, wow, I didn't think of doing that. And yet have enough soul to it to where somebody wants to put it on and listen to it more than once.

SPEAKER_00:

You know, one thing you need in instrumentals is to keep the interest in the song. When you're trying to play an instrumental as a harmonica player, I think you often feel that you lose your momentum a little bit. So to keep that going to sort of four minutes or so through a song is really important for the instrumentals. And again, I think that you do really well in the songs that you do. And I noticed there's a few horror-themed songs on there. You've got Soul Monster and Frank and Bop and Scary Boogie and Devil's Fight. Have you got a particular interest in horror music?

SPEAKER_02:

Oh yeah, man, I grew up seeing all them original horror movies on Universal. Wolfman, Frankenstein, Dracula, all that, you know, as a kid. I always loved those movies, still do, and some of the titles are drawn from that, yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

An album that really first introduced me to your playing is the Modern Masters album, which is a compilation album of yours, which covers, you know, a lot of your career. Talking about a few of the songs that I really love with yours, quite possibly my favorite harmonica song is Rockin' Robin. I really love that song. Anything you say about

SPEAKER_02:

that song? Yeah, it started when we were playing together, me and George, and George would always do a little bitty pretty one on the harp, which was an AM hit, you know, big R&B hit. And so I said, okay, well, George can do that one. I'm going to do Rockin' Robin. So I learned Rockin' Robin and I started playing that down at the club. And then George watched me and I remember the night that George got up after me and he played Rockin' Robin and looked at me and said, Okay, now I'm getting some of yours. You're not only getting some of mine, I'm going to get one of yours. And we were both laughing and I felt good about that. Like I had made a little bit of a statement there and it was worth covering. And now I don't know how many harmonic players have covered it. You know, it was always a great crowd pleaser.

SPEAKER_00:

Another one I really like of yours is the Murder in the First Degree, which is a great, mainly first position song of yours, played on an A-flat harp. Again, I think a great example of you. A lot of emotion in there, some great playing. The emotion for your playing really comes through.

SPEAKER_01:

I call it murder in the first degree.

SPEAKER_00:

How come you women look so good? Is that the song you wrote yourself?

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, I wrote that one myself. It's kind of on a Fats Domino kick, you know? Sort of a New Orleans melody on the harmonica there, and then the words, I don't know how I wrote it.

SPEAKER_01:

With this aerobic ecstasy They draw eyes

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, I love that one. It's a bit like, you know, it's a bit different. It's not just a standard blues song. We touched on chromatic a little bit a few times now. It's something you're really strong at. You know, you do a lot of chromatic playing. Your instrumentals, haven't we talked about? I don't know how many, you know, possibly half of those songs are chromatic instrumentals, aren't they? They very

SPEAKER_02:

well could be. Yeah, I never figured out how many was small harp or the big harp, but I think I forged a style, especially with the 12-hole chromatic that people have emulated over the years, you know, that swing and swing. sort of saxophone-based, 12-hole chromatic jump type of blues. West Coast style blues, they call it now.

SPEAKER_00:

I think you're right. It's that jump style, isn't it? Like West Coast blues, as you say. Because a lot of the chromatic blues you've got here is slow blues. The chromatic works well in those slow blues. But you definitely have a very strong playing of that West Coast kind of jumping style, which really brings a lot of energy to the chromatic. You know, and particularly differences between playing the chromatic and playing the diatonic or the small harp, as you call it.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, for sure. I learned early that you really had to massage that air into the chromatic. You couldn't force it like you could force that small harp. You had to really manipulate them reeds so they would just stall on you, and you couldn't get anything out of it. So it took... breath control really to be able to make them react, especially on a 64, and especially at any kind of fast tempo, to make them read on a 64, especially the low notes, to get them to react quickly. I mean, that's a breath control deal right there for sure. There's not many guys that can really get around on that harp, the big harp today, or even the 12-hole to the degree, I think, that I I got into it when I was really heavy playing.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, and I think that's the reason why a lot of guys play on slow blues, because it's a bit easier to manage. But if you're playing the faster ones, like you said, that you're playing, that's when it does become more challenging, doesn't it? So are you playing a lot of octaves on the chromatic?

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, when I need it for an effect. I find myself now playing more of a... of a blocked style with a bit of a discord, a la Little Walter, then I do find myself playing the big chord of George Smith all the time. I'm only using those big chords when I really want to make a statement and get fierce on it. The rest of the time I think I'm playing it with a bit of a

SPEAKER_00:

discord style. And as you say, you're mainly playing a 12-hole chromatic, are you, in a lot of these songs? Because that suits the faster songs.

SPEAKER_02:

It's easier to get around on the 12 than the 64, of course, yeah. But, I mean, like, heartburn, that's a 64. Heartthrob, that's a 64. Stratospheric, there's several that are up-tempo that are the 64, you know.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, and another thing that you do which isn't so common is you play different keyed chromatics. such as playing the B-flat on the High Flying Babies. You know, any particular reason to do that, just playing the different keys, just get away from the usual sort of D minor and D blues that is usually played on chromatic.

SPEAKER_02:

It started when we had a friend who worked in a music store and he would order strange harps that nobody would buy so he could eventually take them out of the store in the back door and hand them to me. And so I would get these B-flat chromatic and I'd bring it to the gig, and me and George would start playing on it. It worked out great, and then on the gigs, I had to back people like Joe Turner, who played every song in C, and I never really liked too much playing a high F harmonica. They didn't make a low F at the time, so you were either on a B-flat in third, or you were on that high F, and this B-flat chromatic in third gave you the opportunity to play a nice-sounding harp in C, over and over again. So that's why that came about. The F12 hole that I've used, that one I ended up doing one of Mark Hummel's Battle of the Blues harp shows, and they had gave him a bunch of harmonicas Hohner had to give to everybody, and he left me out. And when it came time, I said, man, what happened to the harps? He says, I gave them all away. He says, I got one left. You want it? It's an F chromatic. And I go, yeah, I'll take it. I got it, and I really loved the way it was pitched. And so I did some songs on that. I think I did Devil's Foot on that. I actually have a 64 that's tuned to B-flat instead of C that John Nuzzo got made for me by a guy named John Infandi down in Florida. He was an old-time harmonica player. He put lead on the reeds and brought it down to B-flat from C, and I use that, I think, on Goodbye My Lover, and that's a great harp because that is a 16-hole B-flat chromatic.

SPEAKER_00:

Anyone who wants to check out some great chromatic playing definitely should check out your chromatic playing. Back to Mighty Flies a little bit. Obviously, you were married to Honey, who was in the band. What's the story with Honey and how you became a man and wife? I was playing a gig

SPEAKER_02:

with Pee Wee Creighton. A friend of hers came backstage after the set and said, hey, I got this girl who can really play piano. I said, well, I've got a piano player now, J.D. Nixon, but he doesn't make all the gigs. I said, bring her around to a gig. And I heard her play, and I hired her back in 73 or 74. I was then so lucky because her piano style probably was the biggest component of or at least as big as all the other components of the Mighty Flyers that constructed the sound of that West Coast Blues Mighty Flyers sound that became so popular for us in the 90s. I can't give her enough credit on that. She brought it to another level.

SPEAKER_00:

So Honey joined your band then, and then how long was it before you got married? I

SPEAKER_02:

think

SPEAKER_00:

we got together

SPEAKER_02:

in 76. Then we were living together for a number of years till 89, and we got married in 89. In fact, this April was 31 years of marriage.

SPEAKER_00:

Great. So what's it like then, you know, with your wife and your band living together, touring together? You must get on well.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, we get on real well. Really, really good friends as well as companions and lovers. Musically, She has a better ear than I do, so if I was trying to learn something, she could tell me, no, no, you're playing the wrong note there. You're a half step off. And taught me a lot about zeroing in and the difference between having it and thinking you have it. I'm thankful in that respect and also in the fact that when I went on the road for all them years, I had my wife with me, you know, and I didn't have to be lonely and leery at home.

SPEAKER_00:

Did you work on songs a lot together at home? Is that something you spent a lot of time playing together at home?

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, we sure did. In fact, the song that you really like, Murder in the First Degree, that's written by Honey. A lot of the tunes that we did brought together by the Blues. Quite a few of them was either her writing or writing between me and her together.

SPEAKER_00:

Great partnership. Thinking about bands coming through now, maybe bands starting out, any advice to up-and-coming bands? You

SPEAKER_02:

know, it's a different environment now for these young artists that are trying to make a career in blues than it was when we had the heyday of the 90s. Certainly they don't have as many clubs to work, I don't think, as it used to be. I think one thing I kept in mind as a band leader throughout the years was to keep the show interesting and realize that the whole band had something to offer and give guys in the band a chance to express themselves and keep the audience interested because you got to realize everybody's not there just to see you. If it's a band that they came to see, they want to see everybody do his thing. And so I learned that from George is to give cats a chance to express themselves and do their thing throughout the night. And that way everybody's happy playing music and keeping the tunes apart, you know, keeping the grooves apart, not to do shuffle behind shuffle or slow blues behind shuffle and slow blues and behind shuffle. but to alter the grooves, especially the drum beats, and to keep it interesting so that then people were there for the second set of the night. You didn't play one set and everybody left, and you play into an empty house the second set. One thing about the Mighty Flyers is nobody left till the night was over, and I was proud of that.

SPEAKER_00:

Well, our last question may be on songs. Have you got any particular favorite harmonica tracks yourself? I loved

SPEAKER_02:

Steady by Jerry McCain. I love Sam Myers, Sleeping on the Ground, and my love is here to stay. Wow! Obviously, anything little Walter did. I like George Smith's instrumentals that he did, Boogieing with George. He had quite a few, like, Loose Screws and...

SPEAKER_00:

Talking about your playing, you obviously got this West Coast Blues jump style. We talked about you developed that to some extent with Honey and her influence from her piano playing. Did you develop your style in any particular way or did it just become a morphing of what you listen to and your influences?

SPEAKER_02:

Just the morphing of what I listen to and obviously Walter's playing George is playing. I think I took both of those guys and learned what I could learn from them. Wherever that ended, that became Rod Piazza and forged what made me my own harmonic player. Everybody has influences and everybody listens to somebody and takes from somebody when they start. I think your capabilities and your inadequacies combined are what make up you as an individual player. In other words, what you're not capable of is going to shape what your style and result is as well as what you are capable of. I mean, for me, one of the biggest things that I always kept was not letting the the technical part of it outshine the soul of the blues because I was primarily always interested in being a blues player, not just a harmonica player, but a blues harmonica player. And that I think I did by keeping my instrumentals within the idiom and not turning it into something else.

SPEAKER_00:

Did you have any particular way that you learned the harmonica? Usually, you know, listening to records, playing along, picking stuff up?

SPEAKER_02:

I think that I was pretty much lazy about it. I didn't really grasp it at first. I was too lazy to practice in the correct way. I think once that I got the Little Walter record, I really had something that was so hard to learn is when I really started putting that needle back on the phonograph and trying to learn what this guy was doing. but it was sitting there putting the needle back on these records and trying to learn them. A good analogy would be learning how to spell before you write a sentence, you know, before you can create a song or a phrase, you've got to learn how to get around on the harp and where those notes are. So like everybody, you have to put in your time. You know, the guys that say, oh man, I don't listen to anybody, man, I do my own thing. Well, That's great once you learn how to play. But if you haven't learned what somebody else who knew how to play better than you did to a degree, then you've got no foundation to build upon. You're never going to go anywhere.

SPEAKER_00:

Obviously, you're the singer, and you've always sung in your bands from the beginning, from the first band, The Mystics. So being that frontman, being that singer and harp player, how do you see that as important in the band, rather than just being a harmonica player?

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, being the front man and trying to guide the group in the way you wanted it to go and obviously create the overall ensemble sound. Singing was something you had to do when I started out. If you weren't singing, nobody was hiring just a harmonica player. If you weren't the front guy singing and had a band behind you, you weren't working.

SPEAKER_00:

When we think of all the great harmonica players, most of them sing as well, yes. Yeah, because in

SPEAKER_02:

so singing, you're going to pick the songs that want to do and they're obviously going to be songs that you can play your harmonica with or something that you like that somebody's done and that particular person was singing so you learn not only the instrumental part but the vocal part as well.

SPEAKER_00:

A question I ask each time if you had 10 minutes to practice harmonica what would you spend those 10 minutes working on?

SPEAKER_02:

I think five minutes would be on something that you already know Some song that you've learned just to keep your chops fresh and keep your mouth and your ambiture up. And the other five minutes, I think, would just be on trying to create something new that you haven't played before. You know, when I pick up the harp now, most of the times I don't have an idea in my head until I start playing the harp and something comes out. And I say, hey, yeah, that was something worth repeating. And then I'll go back and try to play that again. Sometimes I can play it again. Sometimes I can't. In so doing that, I think that's how you create something new for yourself and add to your vocabulary.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, that comes through strongly as you talked about your instrumentals earlier on, that you try to come up with something new, yeah? I think a lot of people, and I find myself doing this quite a lot, you know, might just play songs that you know of other people's, you know, other people's harmonica parts, whereas you spend quite a lot of time trying to come up with your own new stuff,

SPEAKER_02:

yeah? Yeah, trying to find a head that you maybe heard by on a saxophone phone record or you can't quite play the whole head, but you can take a portion of it and then elaborate on top of that and create something new. I think that's what I primarily did. Everybody has an idea before they start, but sometimes that idea morphs into something different when it's finally done.

SPEAKER_00:

So you would start those by learning ahead on the harmonica and then you would let the music fit afterwards. Mostly that would be around a blues structure. We mentioned the embouchure there, the question that harmonica players love to talk about. So are you more of a tongue blocker or a puckerer or another embouchure or a mixture of the two? I would say

SPEAKER_02:

on the chromatic, I would be playing it with my tongue on the harp all the time. On the small harp, Throughout the years, I primarily played it puckering about 60% and blocking 40%. But in the last two years, I've changed that to where I'm probably playing 90% with my tongue on the harp and 10% with it off the harp. There's just certain things you can't do with your tongue on the harp. So I've changed a bit in the last two years in regards to the small harp. on the big harp, I haven't changed. It's always been with your tongue on it the whole time. So

SPEAKER_00:

for most of the time you've been playing, you've got more puckering, a mixture of tongue blocking and puckering, but quite a lot of puckering at least. You get a great tone, you know, and I think a lot of people will probably guess you were tongue blocking a lot of the time. From that, you get a big sound, great tone. And switching between them, personally, myself, I tongue block the vast majority of the time. But I find it quite difficult to switch between the two when I'm playing. I mean, I can do it, but I'm so used to tongue blocking the smaller heart. So is that something that you're able to switch between the two ways quite easily?

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, that was a bit of a tough way to go. In fact, I've got TMJ. I've had it since I've been in the 20s. That's a deal where your jaw clicks every time you open and close it. The ligaments behind your jaw get loose, and I have to think that I've got that from altering between puckering and blocking because you have to do it so quickly. And I think because of that, I got that, and I've learned to live with it. But I think if I'd have played one way or the other, it probably wouldn't have happened.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, interesting. So maybe it's not good for your health maybe to switch between the two.

UNKNOWN:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

And you've done quite a lot of work as a sideman, quite a lot of session work, haven't you? You've played with a lot of different people as well, Jimmy Rogers.¶¶ Pee Wee Creighton, you mentioned a few names there. Any particular comment on how it's different playing as a sideman from being the band leader?

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, I think I'll sum it up to you. One time I went to a recording session with George Smith and he was playing behind, I believe it was Joe Turner. They were doing a 45 and When we left and we were riding in the car, I said, hey, man, how come you didn't play more, man? You didn't put a whole lot on it. And he thought for a minute and he looked at me and said, Rod, that man don't like no harmonica. And it was kind of true, you know, Joe Turner had recorded all his stuff with a horn player, you know, a horn section. And so George kind of had the insight to know, let me just put what the producer's happy with here, but not try to overpower or overshadow the song or the artist that's in front. And I think I kept that in mind in all my recordings with somebody else, with Jimmy Rogers. with Smokey Wilson, with Pee Wee Creighton, on and on and on. To give them the best I could give them to augment what they were doing, not to overshadow what they were doing, you know, and take the focus off the artist and the song.

SPEAKER_00:

Just talking about gear now, we're going to run through a few questions around that. So the first question is, what harmonica do you play now? What type of harmonica? I was

SPEAKER_02:

playing the Herring harmonicas. because they were endorsing me for quite a few years, and they were free. That's my favorite harmonica, a free harmonica, after Hohner giving me the 50% off for I don't know how many years, but I went with them, and now a friend of mine has been giving me these Hohner Special 20s that he dials in, and Rich Parrish is his name, and I've been using his. And the other day, Dennis Grundling, he had Hohner send me some of these. Marine Bands again, and I forget, the Marine Band Deluxe, I think they're called. And they seem like a real good harp. I like those a lot, too. As far as the chromatic, I still like the Herring 64 and the Herring Velvet Voice 12-hole.

SPEAKER_00:

Yes, the Herring are based in Brazil, aren't they? Weren't they making a Rob Piazza harmonica at one point?

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, they did make one, and it was quite expensive at the time,$85, I think. I came up when harps were$2, so it seemed ridiculously high, but I guess that's what they pay for harps now. But yeah, we never did quite get it. Perfect dialed in like I would have liked to have had it. It is a really good harp, but you've got to take a little bit of time because it's all bronze, and them reeds are really strong, so you have to work it in. It takes a bit of time to break it in. Most cats don't have that time to break in a harp if they work in four or five nights a week.

SPEAKER_00:

Well, harmonicas, like you said, are more expensive, but I think they're good quality harmonicas these days. I think they've done a lot to improve them, haven't they?

SPEAKER_02:

You've got so many guys now, I guess, that tune them in for these guys that play professionally and really make them perfect. And that's a big plus, you know, when that harp will work for you.

SPEAKER_00:

And do you have a favorite key of diatonic?

SPEAKER_02:

The small harp, I'd say the one I'd probably pick up more than anything would be the A harp.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, it seems to be a popular choice. And do you play any different tunings of harmonica, or do you stick to the standard tuning?

SPEAKER_02:

other than the low harps, you know, no. Pierre Beauregard and them gave me some of them magic harps 10, 20 years ago, I guess it was. And damn, they had a reggae band and a big band and this band and that band, magic band. Man, I could never figure them damn things out, man. And And I just, Rick Estrin told me, he said, man, I couldn't figure him out either. I don't need another hurdle to jump over. And that sort of said it all. I left him alone. I'll pick him up once in a while in the garage and see where I'm at on it. But it's just so, I can't find him.

SPEAKER_00:

And do you play any overblows at all?

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, I don't know nothing about that, but all I know is bending them high notes up there, 8, 9, and 10, blowing and bending those. But as far as blowing lower and bending it, no.

SPEAKER_00:

Okay, and what amplifier do you use? What's your amplifier of choice?

SPEAKER_02:

The only one I ever liked to play through is the Harp King, you know, and that was an amp created by John Kinder and myself over the years of me finding old amplifiers that sounded better than what I had and him making them sound like the old amplifier and on and on and on over the years and finally coming up with the Rod Mod and he would modify all these old amps for me to have the sound I wanted and then finally he decided he wanted to make his own amp. and call it the Harp King and put the Rod Mod in it and make it adjustable. And that was back, I think, around 97. And since then, I've never wanted really to play any other amp but those amps. So do you

SPEAKER_00:

play the 6x10 or

SPEAKER_02:

the 4x10? I have them both, and I also have the Soulful, which is the 210 model. They're all great, but if I have one amp to go to for any size of room, it's... It's the 610, because I can play that in a very small room. I mean, you just adjust the mod in it, and heck, you can play it in a room that's 8x20 or 8x15 even, you know.

SPEAKER_00:

Wow, that's amazing. You would have thought an amp so big would be so loud, but you're able to really get the volume down, are you?

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, because of the mod that's adjustable in it, you can put the volume on three or four and set the mod correctly and then have a great tone at the volume of a Champ or a Deluxe or something.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, that's brilliant. Yeah, I've never tried a Harp King. I'd love to try one one day. I'll put a link to the website for the Harp Kings, and I'll let you say you were instrumental in helping John Kinder design those. I mean, your sound is, you know, you get a very distinctive sound with your playing. You know, it's described, it's quite a heavy, fat sound, especially on those low notes. It really rumbles through, doesn't it, the sound that you get.¶¶ Is that, you know, a lot of that down to the amp that's getting that tone, and that's the sound you wanted to develop with the Harp King amp?

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, I would say it's part of everything. As you know, being a harmonica player, it's part in your mouth. part in your hands, part in the microphone, and part in the amp. I don't think you can walk out and buy one amp and all of a sudden you sound exactly like somebody else. I think any harp player is a combination of everything he does.

SPEAKER_00:

Do you use the same setup when you're playing chromatic through the amplifier? Yeah. And for your small amp, you've said already, so you use a 2x10, Harp King is your small amp of choice.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, it's a soulful, it's called. It's 210s, 40 watts, just a great sounding little amp. In fact, they're really wanted right now by harp players. There's a list of guys that are looking for one, but we haven't been able to make any, and so I'm instrumental right now in getting John together with me, and we're going to build about 10 of them, and they'll be coming out later this year once again. It's just a fabulous instrument. amp for anybody who's playing a small gig or who doesn't really have any gigs and plays at home or goes to a jam once in a while. It's very compact, but yet it has the broad mod in it and is capable of at least being as loud as a bassman. And

SPEAKER_00:

microphones, what's your microphones of choice?

SPEAKER_02:

The body would be the Aesthetic JT30. The element would be the Shure Crystal. I have a friend up here in Northern California, San Jose, Mark Overman. He goes by BigToneMark at Gmail. He's made the mics for me for probably the last 15 years at least. He's made the mics and given me the best mics that I use. I used to build them myself, but he's way beyond me. He puts in the correct volume pot and the correct capacitors, you know, to level out the tonal response at any volume, and he's the guy, for me anyway.

SPEAKER_00:

I always wonder where they get all these elements from, because all the crystal elements are gone now, but I know there's newer ones, isn't there, but these guys seem to be able to find them, don't they, somehow, these mics, which work great, so they're worth the weight in gold, those guys. Yeah. Do you use any effects pedals?

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, I've been using a digital delay for 20, 30 years, however long they had it. It's just a digital delay, so it gives you a sort of a slapback echo sound. And I was using an analog delay before that or a tape echo back in the 70s, but the tape would break on the tape echoes. And on the analog delay, the last note of the repeat would always go flat, so it would sound like... And that aggravated me because it always sounded like I had hit a flat note. But when they came out with digital, the response, the repeat was clean and didn't vary and so I've been using that ever since.

SPEAKER_00:

Do you know what make of pedal that is? Yeah, it was a Boss. Boss, yeah. So is delay the only effect you use?

SPEAKER_02:

The only other pedal I use is on a fly-in. I'll use Kinder's AFB box, which is really the rod mod in a little box. And so you can plug into that and essentially make any amp have the rod mod in it and take your current amp up to 50% better sounding than what you've got.

SPEAKER_00:

So is that the Kinder anti-feedback, the same John Kinder who makes the Hot King amps? Correct. The kinder one adds a little bit of distortion, doesn't it? So, yeah. But they're still making them then, is it, the kinder and feedback pedals?

SPEAKER_02:

It's so hard to get in touch with John. He works from like midnight to six in the morning or something, and he doesn't answer his phone. If you send him an email, you might get lucky, but no other pedal compares to it.

SPEAKER_00:

Last question then, and thanks again for your time, is obviously we're in this period pandemic time at the moment, but have you got any tours lined up later in the year that you're hoping that are going to be able to happen, or maybe next year, anything coming up that you're looking to do?

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, I'm going to return to the Tampa Bay Blues Festival next April. I was going to be there this April. Obviously, it didn't happen. So next April, that's on the books. I'll be doing that with the Mighty Flyers band and Rusty Zinn Also playing guitar with Henry Carvajal, both guitar players, and Honey and the band. And actually now we have Ed Mann playing drums, who was in the Mighty Flyers back in the 80s. And he was also with the Big Town Playboys from England. for a while and he's back in the group now on drums so he'll be with me and we'll be doing that next year and obviously whatever else comes along between now and then yeah brilliant any plans to come over to Europe at all? I had quite a few offers, to be honest with you, to come for the Great British Rhythm and Blues Festival. I think that's the name of it. Several other festivals in Europe. And then at my age, the thought of getting on a plane for 13 hours, even if I was in first class, which is the only way I fly now, I can't sleep on the plane. I end up getting there feeling so bad that I've turned down all the the European work

SPEAKER_00:

yeah understandable you played I think the Great Rhythm and Blues Festival a few years ago now and I unfortunately I couldn't make it to see you I really wish I had made you a special effort because I've never actually seen you play live but yeah you did play there maybe it must have been at least 10 years ago now so yeah missed you unfortunately that time it's a shame maybe I'll come out to the States and see you next year would be the only way so thanks Appreciate so much talking to you, Rod. And again, you know, really love you playing. So, yeah, thanks very much for taking the time to speak to me. Thank you, man. Always a pleasure, baby. That's it for today, folks. Final word from my sponsor, the Longwolf Blues Company, providing some great effects pedals and microphones, all purpose-built for the harmonica. Be sure to check out their website.